I was so happily startled last night while I was scrolling through Netflix streaming and saw that the film I Remember You was available. It was a movie I missed in theaters and really wanted to see because it’s based on a novel by one of my favorite authors Yrsa Sigurdardottir that really haunted me after I read it. Sigurdardottir is an Icelandic writer of excellent crime novels (her latest The Legacy is blazingly brilliant) but this chilly ghost tale was very different for her. It was a book that burrows under your skin and really lays eggs. It completely unnerved me. And I’m happy to say the film version by Oskar Thor Axelsson captures the mood and eerie remote locations that the book so eloquently evoked. There are two stories working simultaneously during the movie. A woman is found hanging in a church and a psychiatrist Freyr (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), who the police have brought in, finds these puzzling crosses carved into her back (some fresh, and some quite older). As he investigates he discovers the suspicious deaths of many of the hanged woman’s former classmates (when she was a young girl), whose bodies also had crosses cut into their backs. It all appears linked to the disappearance of a boy who was bullied by these classmates, and whose body was never found. This has an impact on Freyr, whose own son vanished at a rest stop a few years back and to this day has never been located. The other story is about three friends (one is a couple and the other a girl pal of theirs) who arrive at a remote and desolate island in order to renovate this house (which is in bad shape) into a bed & breakfast. White they are working one of them keeps seeing strange things- the flash of a figure down the hall, small wet footprints on the floor. She finds a graveyard cross near the water, one that had been uprooted from the small graveyard nearby. Both these stories eventually collide in creepily unexpected ways. This is definitely a slow burn of a tale, but the ending is so satisfying in such strange ways that it’s worth it.
If you’re in the mood for another macabre treat there’s Veronica, a Spanish film by Paco Plaza, one of the directors of the sensationally scary Rec (which he co-directed with Jaume Balaguero). Based on a true story about a teenage girl Veronica (Sandra Escacene) in Madrid in 1991. Her mother works in a bar all day and she is stuck taking care of her siblings- twin girls and their younger brother. She sneaks off with two Catholic school girlfriends to a spooky church cellar and with the use of a makeshift Ouija board they try to make contact with the dead. Unfortunately, this conjures up a vengeful spirit that follows Veronica home. This is another slow burn tale but it definitely has some truly unsettling moments of terror.
A great series now streaming is The Frankenstein Chronicles. It stars Sean Bean (Ned Stark of Game Of Thrones) as detective John Marlott investigating a series of child killings in 19th century London. The bodies of dead children wash up on the beach but they are stitched together body parts. Marlott is convinced it is a rogue scientist attempting to re-animate corpses. He even reaches out to author Mary Shelley (Anna Maxwell Martin), whose book Frankenstein had already been released, but she becomes fearful by his appearance. Marlott soon discovers his inquiries rattle decadent members of high society, corrupt politicians, and a nefarious shadowy presence that threatens his life. The first season is fascinating and entirely watchable but then we come to final episode of the season. It totally pulled the rug out from under me. I was so thrown by it. It’s so unexpectedly wild that it made me crazily love the show. That sets us up for Season 2 which has one of my favorite actors- Laurence Fox who was on the Inspector Lewis mysteries as Lewis’ sidekick- DI James Hathaway. Here he plays a mysterious wealthy aristocrat named Frederick Dipple with a love for elaborate mechanical toys that his sister creates for him in a gothic mansion. The period settings are really quite good- God knows there’s enough mud in the streets. But it’s an exciting show and hope a 3rd season may happen if it catches on through Netflix.
